writers, it will retain its hold on the faith of the Church, and finally capture the convictions of mankind.

This confidence of Christian scholarship is justified both by the past history and present aspect of Christianity. In its infancy Christian faith, as already noted, was compelled to a conflict with the speculations of the prevailing philosophy. The battle between its "new faith and the old knowledge" was long and severe. Its issue often seemed doubtful. But after three centuries Christian faith triumphed, and it came out of the fight with its faith enriched by ideas of which it had despoiled its foes. Placed in the light of this historic fact, Christian scholarship is not disturbed by the claim of that "scientific knowledge of material things... which is now loudly asserting its right and its power to undertake the guidance and government of mankind," nor by the effort of the destructive critics to rob the Scriptures of their credibility. The past victory of Christianity over the old gnosis will repeat itself in a triumph over the new scientific materialism and criticism, and in enriching the faith with the spoils of its rationalistic adversaries. Its theology, its critical methods, its historical knowledge, and the circumference of its thought have indeed been already enlarged by the studies to which its defenders have been driven in replying to the charges of its foes. Already rationalism gives evidence of diminishing resources for further attack, in the fact that it is bringing no new theories into the field. It is also obvious that the tide of the battle is now against them. Christian scholarship is no longer on the defensive, but is confidently aggressive; and, to cite the language of James Baldwin Brown, "the certainty has grown clearer that the ultimate result of this tremendous clashing of ideas and forces arrayed by the world's wisdom against the facts and the truth of the Gospel will be to inscribe its central message the mission of Christ to save-blazoned in letters of living light, on the great temple of human history."

THE COMMON PEOPLE.

Who are the common people? In the American Republic class distinctions founded in hereditary privileges, titles, and conditions are unknown; aristocracies, nobilities, castes, feudalistic divisions, recognized in law and perpetuated by custom, do not flourish. The people are one— one in privilege, one in rights, one in opportunity, and one in the growth, fame, and destiny of the country. Neither the repulsive and degrading system of caste as it exists in India, nor the improved but mechanical and unnatural system of social classification as it appears in England and Europe, finds any counterpart in American life. Our civilization is unique in the character of its freedom, in the breadth of its simplicities, in the common inheritance of good-will and opportunity secured to men of every degree. Without laws of primogeniture, without ex post facto laws, without sectional oppression, it is not surprising that the Eastern Hemisphere, afflicted with social distempers, is emptying itself of its surplus populations

on our shores. The instinct of the race points it to the land of freedom, as the instinct of the bird carries it in the winter to the South. Here caste dies upon the altar of freedom; here oppression vanishes into the shades of history; here man is man; here he rises from the dung-hill to the throne; here the throne is but the people in power. The "general gender," as Shakespeare phrases it, is in authority, dominating over itself; 'it is not the few over the many, for there are no "few;" the many are the 'all in all.

In every land the liberty-loving leader is the idol of the multitude, because his instincts are in harmony with the common and ruling instinct. Gladstone in England, Castelar in Spain, Laveleye in Belgium, Tolstof in Russia, Victor Hugo in France, Lincoln in America, are types of men who interpret human thought and aspiration in their widest and holiest meaning, and are ready to frame governments in harmony with them. Hitherto the function of civil government had respect, not to the masses, except to terrorize and degrade them, but to the prosperity of the aristocracies; hence the strifes between the lower and upper classes which make history a tale of blood. The day of the common people in all lands is at hand; they have a voice and it is heard; they have a grievance and it is known; they have rights and they are claiming them; they object to degradation, and that is a hopeful sign of their elevation. The instinct of the masses is in motion, and is a terror to wrong theorizing as well as to wrong doing. While the world's instinct is making itself felt, shaking thrones because they have hitherto crushed it, and threatening all nations because of injustice to the poor, it presents an anomaly in this country worthy of serious study. In no country as in this are the multitude so free, so happy, so protected in their rights, and so appreciative of their opportunities; yet the same spirit of anarchy, distrust, and danger is as obvious in the republic as in the monarchy that oppresses and destroys. The nihilism of Russia is not without justification; the socialism of Germany is in part the fruit of the militarism of the empire; the rebellious spirit in Ireland plants itself upon English provocation stretching over centuries; and so throughout the world there is explanation of, if not palliation for, the nihilism that threatens to sweep away the bulwarks of social and political institutions. But on the surface of things it is not patent why freedom 'should produce the same result as oppression; why a peace-loving spirit that requires no army should breed the same distrust of government as militarism; why a republic should be threatened with the same dangers as a monarchy; why anarchy can thrive among a people who have their own way as among those who are slaves. That the anomaly exists requires no proof, but only a statement. Chicago is as anarchical as Dublin, Moscow, Berlin, or London. Cleveland, Pittsburg, New York, and Baltimore are centers of socialistic organizations as threatening in purpose and as dangerous to the public peace as the National League of Ireland or the reviving Commune of France. We can account for foreign nihilism, but native nihilism here is an anomaly.

Searching for the cause, we find that as evils often propagate them

selves by the mere force of contagion, so socialism spreads by the process of inoculation, all nations taking the same malady, irrespective of condi tions, and in defiance of the very means intended to prevent the spread of the evil. Hence, it is not strange that as one kingdom in Europe fosters, a vice the continent partakes of it, because the social conditions of the continent, to say nothing of the juxtaposition of nations and close commercial relations, are so similar as to favor the same disease. But that a distant republic, whose spirit is so different from that of Europe, whose conditions are seemingly unfavorable to the European malady, should exhibit the same symptoms, cannot be explained in whole by the process of inoculation. It may be true, that as cholera invades Arabia so it invades, America. Socialism is as likely to appear in one nation as another, and is not always the result of certain antecedent or existing conditions pointing to socialism as the remedy for the social disorder. To explain the anomaly we must remember that contagion is not very effective unless it assimilates with the national life; that is, inoculation must be followed by assimilation before contagion will be destructive. Do we, with our orderly national character, create a tendency to assimilation of the disorder? Remembering that the foreign contagion is not imported to this country on the wings of the wind, but rather by actual personification of its worst phases-that the degraded classes of Europe rush to this country every year by the thousands, and are ready for any kind of life-that whatever is inimical to a pure democratic form of government is borne to us by every ship that anchors in our waters-that the spirit of foreignism, inap, preciative of American ideas, is irreconcilable with the steady progress, of the New World--it is not difficult to trace the evil to its source, and, observing its tendency to temporary assimilation with our national energy, it is not difficult to account for its hold upon native elements, provided they are ready for the new influence.

It is at this point that the American people should' pause and consider, for, granting uniqueness to our civilization, and an inseparable peculiarity to our institutions, a close acquaintance with our social conditions will show a similarity to those of Europe, and a preparation little surmised for the growth of the most destructive socialism. With our boasted freedom, privileges, and enlightenment, we have permitted the common people, through various processes, both native and foreign, to gravitate into a condition of servility, degradation, and depravity that, unless. arrested, will in time bring upon us the fury and havoc of socialistic corruption, disunion, and degeneracy. Whether slavery or foreignism or sectionalism or war had much to do in precipitating this condition, it matters not, as the chief point is to recognize the situation and then provide remedial agents.

In the matter of common education the Republic is grievously in arrears, being behind many European nations-Greece, France, and Germany in particular—and is suffering under a load of illiteracy that, aside from its humiliating aspects, is pregnant with revolutions, social Armageddons, and the direst political earthquakes. Under a monarchy social revolutions

may be suppressed, but in a republic the soil is favorable to their growth. In the one, power is the remedy; in the other, education. It is useless to talk about the efficiency of law for the regulation of the socialistic movement, for it can be but temporary in effect. So long as free speech is a cardinal doctrine of the Republic, suppression by law of nihilism is out of the question. Law we must have; the police force must be strengthened; public sentiment must be uniform in its opposition to the danger; and the press must echo that sentiment until it is heard by every anarchist between the seas. But that law and sentiment will not avail is evident from the fact that they are now in operation, yet but feebly restrain, and do not extinguish, the tendencies to public anarchism. Education of the illiterate masses is a remedy that, however unavailing in Europe, will not be without use in this country. Nihilism and education have joined hands in Russia; socialism in Germany is backed by an intelligence that militarism cannot cajole into acquiescence; the commune of France was led by brainy aristocrats; the conflict in Ireland is headed by Parnell and Gladstone; so that it does not appear that education elsewhere is the remedy for social rebellion. In this country there is reason to believe that it will avail for the suppression of the evil, because ignorance engineers it, and it is without justification either in the structure of our society or the attitude of the government and Church toward it. In other countries it gives a reason for itself in governmental tyranny; hence the educated classes rise up against it: in this country, where there is no tyranny, ignorance for the sake of something to do plays at socialism, and education will extinguish it. We call for schools, schools, SCHOOLS, as the first duty of the government to its children.

The evils of accumulated wealth, so common in foreign countries through inheritance or the favoring opportunities opened to those of noble birth, are repeating themselves in this country, where the temporal condition of every man is theoretically supposed to equal that of every other, and where congested wealth might be supposed to be impossible. The truth is, a republic is not only on a par with a monarchy in opening the way to wealth, but it furnishes greater opportunities than the monarchy for this purpose, and renders the evil still more dangerous because less bearable than elsewhere. Here wealth piles itself up in fabulous quantities in the hands of monopolists, syndicates, or the quiet broker in stocks, until Croesus is surpassed in every city in the land; until wealth becomes a prize to be sought by gambling, by all sorts of brokerage, by watered stocks, by vague enterprises of all kinds, by legitimate business on an enormous scale, but so conducted as to enrich the few who secretly manage it. This has not been possible in foreign lands. Our country offers resources, opportunities, commercial outfits, and probabilities that are not found elsewhere; and a commercial genius may triumph over the masses, who, as anxious as himself to succeed, cannot plan so shrewdly, act so alertly, or wring the gold so conscientiously from hands that laboriously earned it. Where there is great wealth there is also great poverty. This is as true in the republic as in the monarchy, for wealth implies a disturbance of com

mercial equality; that is, as one man accumulates other men must disgorge, or accumulation would be impossible except where one is an absolute creator of wealth. Commercial inequality, or wealth and poverty, in their extreme contrasts, now afflict the republic as they have afflicted the monarchy for ages past; and if wealth continue to accumulate more, and poverty continue to spread itself, a social revolution will be the result. In a republic the common people make themselves felt, and wealth cannot afford to antagonize them, to laugh at their calamities, or to shut up its bowels of compassion in time of need. Wealth must be benevolent, patriotic, philanthropic, a distributer of its gains, the almoner of the nation's weal, or it will invite destruction.

Religion is the necessity of all classes, but it is a problem how to bring the common people into sympathy with it, how to induce them to embrace it as their greatest need, and how most absolutely to secure their indorsement of all that it teaches and enjoins. In foreign countries religion is a state institution; that is, it is under national control, and is therefore somewhat subject to political change and maneuver. The principle of dissent is growing, and, like an earthquake, will at an early day overthrow national authority in religion. Germany and England, as Protestant nations; Russia, the representative of Greek Christianity; and Italy, Austria, and France as examples of the Latin religion, indicate the tenacity of the national purpose to subject religion to national supervision; but it cannot be said that the people are more devout, benevolent, spiritual, missionary in impulse, and broader in Christian experience than the people of countries whose religion is not within the grasp of the gov ernment machinery. Whatever the advantages of a monarchical religion they do not equal those of a republican religion. In this country religion is practically independent of government, as government is legally free of religion; but no harm results from the divorcement, for the government is not atheistic, and religion tends not to infidelity, but rather to activity and aggression.

Yet, owing to the liberty of the Church, in America it is nearing a danger whose cautionary signals, raised now and then, should be studied and heeded. In Europe the national Church is an oppression; in America the free Church, instead of oppressing the masses, is gradually alienating them, and so separating itself from the people whom it would serve. It is not because of laws or tithes or purgatorial keys that Protestantism, as a system of religion, is losing in power over the people, but because of the aristocratic sense-which is always an offense in the sight of the average man-it appears to manifest to the people.

When, more than ever, the Church should be bending toward the people it is lifting itself above them, and they see it, and reluctantly turn away from the cherished institution. They accuse it, not of pessimism or failure so much as of the vanity that comes from wealth or is the result of a long and eventful history, or of the latent tendencies of a half-regenerated membership. Just now, when the Church should be humble and sympathetic, the Protestant Episcopal Church proposes to discard its name, as